Divinity: Original Sin 2
Every sin here has been done before, we guarantee
THE ISOMETRIC RPG has been a mainstay of PC gaming since the ’ 90s, and feels most at home here, thanks to the highres screens and mouse input that, until recently, consoles couldn’t match.
OriginalSin2 is a sequel to the prequel to the DivineDivinity series, thus tracing its lineage back to 2002 and some awful cover art. Today, thanks to Kickstarter’s largesse, we have a huge game, oozing the kind of polish we could only imagine in the early ’00s, yet some things feel very familiar.
Take the immediate beginning. You wake up on a table, and a huge bell marked “Planescape: Torment” begins to ring. As it turns out, you’re not immortal, merely quite easily resurrected, but the rest is up to you. Or not, as Larian Studios has included several ready-baked characters for you to pick from in the character creator. You can still roll your own, but choosing one of the ready-made avatars means you’re treated to a full origin story and additional options in dialogue. Of which there’s rather a lot.
The backstories are rich, and the dialogue options often helpful and frequently amusing. The pre-cooked also bring a sense of playing a role in the world, rather than just being yourself, as many RPG characters end up. If we can overcome our natural instincts and offer a kind word to a pauper, or maybe flirt with a kitchen maid, because that’s what your lusty seadog of a character would do, rather than hiding behind our natural shyness, we’re in a realm of role-playing streets away from considering “what would I do?”
Every line is voiced, including those of the narrator, so there’s a lot to sit back and listen to. It’s perhaps not a game for quick-fix playing, because it’s all too easy to sink hours into it, but it rewards this time investment with interesting characters and the kind of depth we rarely see. Everyone (including animals with the right ability) can be spoken to, even if they simply tell you to go away, traded with, or murdered. Killing a quest-specific character may close off that avenue to progress, but there are so many ways to do anything, you’re hardly ever faced with having to reload in order to un-break your campaign.
The plot, involving powerful magic (which you can’t use at the beginning, thanks to a damping collar that needs to be removed), revenge, and the ascendancy to godhood, starts slowly, with a cleverly masked tutorial section laying out the turn-based combat and elemental magic system. The fighting, which happens a lot unless you’re very charismatic, is one of the game’s weaker aspects, making it all too easy to get bunched up under an area-of-effect spell. The limited action points per turn are to blame for this, despite being a perfectly good system for turn-based brawling, as you’re more likely to want to use them for attacks rather than movement. Again, you must play a role—that of someone who wants to get out of this alive, rather than someone who wants to see particle effects.
Built on top of the Enhanced Edition of the previous game, and benefiting from everything Larian learned while enhancing it, OriginalSin2 is a highly polished RPG. It can take a long time to get into, the zoom level never seems to go wide enough, and the completely manual camera can hide things from you, but this detailed world is aching to be explored.
Divinity: Original Sin 2
ORIGINAL Deep, long RPG that looks and sounds amazing.
MISERABLE Slow to start; camera woes.
RECOMMENDED SPECS Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 770/AMD R9 280.
$45, http://divinity.game, ESRB: M